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23 January 2013

American Evangelicals Meddling in Uganda

I have been writing over at Humanosphere lately. I will do my best to alert you to when my writing appears elsewhere. Here is a clip from my latest post. Go here to read the full thing.

It’s so bizarre it can seem funny. But, for some, it’s deadly serious. Uganda’s parliament looks likely to pass a new law that would make homosexuality illegal.

The original bill went so far as to include the death penalty. The controversial nature of Uganda’s proposed anti-gay legislation has attracted some media attention globally, but only now are more details trickling in regarding the influence some American conservative Christians have had in promoting the bill and the anti-gay agenda of some leading Ugandan politicians.

The details are emerging thanks to a lawsuit that has been brought against Massachusetts evangelical Scott Lively, founder and president of Abiding Truth Ministries, for his anti-gay activism in Uganda.

The suit says that Lively’s actions have gone beyond free speech and that he incited the prosecution and limiting of the rights of gays in Uganda. An opponent to homosexuality, Lively once told the Daily Show that homosexuals were ‘exceptionally brutal and savage’ and said that is why they were used by Hitler for fighting.

The organization Sexual Minorities Uganda sued Lively in early 2012 under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). ATS allows non-US citizens to bring forward cases that involve violations of international law and human rights abuses.